Old News WordPress Theme
about old news
release notes
faq’s
screenshot, demo, purchase & download links
affliates – earn 50%!
comments & support
I couldn’t sleep one night – kept having a creative idea about a wordpress theme that resembled an old newspaper, but was still built around the actual content (the news itself) and not the graphic design. That vision changed a bit as I coded it, but the essence of the theme is that of a newspaper look and feel. Ultimately, it’s a personal blog theme, probably not the best for a business, but great for blogging.
The theme was developed in a WordPress 2.8 testing environment and is fully 2.8 compatible, right down to the threaded comments. Here are some things that I think make it stand out…
- Focus on usability – very easy to navigate, fonts are large, padding is somewhat generous.
- Built on a grid, so it’s easy to customize to different sizes.
- Plenty of comments throughout the files to help you customize it.
- Planned for some ad spaces.
- Breadcrumbs are built in – no plugin needed.
- Includes every possible theme file except a home.php. I plan on developing a few optional home.php files and offering them separately.
- Works just as well in plain white with no background (see screenshots) for an example.
- jQuery tabs are built-in for the top widget to condense some sidebar space.
- Used soft gray lines to guide the eyes through the content flow.
- Four widgetized areas in the sidebar, the fourth at the bottom which appears only on the front page.
- GPL-compatible license. Credit to me is appreciated, but not required.
Release – 0.9.1, July 1, 2009 – added a horizontal listing/menu of child pages of the current page under the breadcrumbs in page.php.
Current Release – 0.9.0 beta, July 1, 2009
Why beta? I’d like to give it a week or two of use by others to see what bugs I might have missed. Then, when it’s ready to submit to the themes directory, I’ll upgrade it to 1.0. So please offer feedback in the comments below or via my contact form so I can make fixes.
I’d also like to thank a few friends on Twitter who tested the theme before its release… @jamesgarland, @joshhemsley, @ianroke, @cottonr, @jasonlinas, @Whodeeni, @stubbyd, @passionsista, and @wayne_etc.
I’m assuming these will be frequently asked…
How do I replace the header’s title text with my logo?
Graphically, I would put in a transparent png, take a screenshot, clip your logo against my background and re-insert it as a jpeg. But that’s just me.
As far as the code goes, take out the following from header.php:
-
<p id="logo" class="site-title"><a href="<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>"><?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?></a></p>
and insert this:
-
<a href="<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>"><img src="<?php bloginfo (‘template_directory’); ?>/images/logo.jpg"> alt="<?php bloginfo (‘name’); ?>" id="logo" class="site-title" /></a>
Your image file can be .jpg, .gif, or whatever, but store it in the /images directory of the theme’s files. Either name it logo.jpg or change the link in the above code accordingly. This will show your logo and will have an alt= text of your site’s name.
How do I insert adsense, amazon, or other script based code into the ad space?
This will require some working knowledge of css and html. In the sidebar, you’re basically going to need to create a div with margins and put the script inside that div to space it away from other elements. For example, if you want to insert a 250 pixel wide ad code into the 300 pixel wide sidebar, I would do this…
-
<div class="widget" style="margin-left: 25px; margin-right: 25px;"><!– insert your ad code here –></div>
You say the theme supports threaded comments, but they don’t appear.
You must turn on threaded discussions in your admin panel under Settings > Discussion. I set my levels to 3, but you can do whatever you’d like.
I’ll add more to the faq’s as I hear questions frequently asked.
Screenshot of the theme in white with no background images…
Sweet, New WordPress theme from @brandonacox. http://ow.ly/gho2
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Old News WordPress Theme | eGrace Creative Web Solutions: about old news release notes faq’s screenshot, demo, &.. http://bit.ly/RoFA4
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
#design reading: Old News WordPress Theme | eGrace Creative Web Solutions: eGrace Creative – Nor.. http://bit.ly/RoFA4
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Old News WordPress Theme | eGrace Creative Web Solutions http://bit.ly/pQLVh
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Old News WordPress Theme | eGrace Creative Web Solutions http://bit.ly/14dpyi
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
This is a really interesting one i loved reading it. i love wordpress themes.
Hi there -
Thank you for Old News. I’ve been looking for a vintage newspaper template, and yours is the best one I’ve ever found.
I know that you can’t make your template compatible with all and every plugin out there, but there seems to be a conflict with the 2 main Lightbox2 plugs out there.
Basicaly, if one installs lightbox, it kills your Search/Recent/Archives tab.
This is too bad, as I love using lightbox, but I also like this functionality in your template.
It’s an FYI for you, at least.
Thanks again, and nice work. I love all of the nice styled details.
- Daniel
Really nice work, Brandon! I added all of your themes to WP Theme Lounge (http://wptheme-lounge.com/2010/01/06/old-news/).
Wow – thanks very much!! Quite honored.
I have two questions please I am trying to help a friend. On this page http://egracecreative.com/oldnews/2009/07 You see the archives are on the left very narrow,
1) How can those be full and like the regular content instead of that narrow band on the left?
2) How can the “recent” tab display the articles by newest posted time and date instead of ABC order?
3) How can you remove the Comments from every page?
Thanks for your help.
Elle
Hello
I really love this theme but am having a few problems with it … eg:
View all posts only shows one post … the following category has two posts in it:
http://ghostboxers.com/category/james-jim-corbett/
When viewing the archives, they are all squidged up down one side:
http://ghostboxers.com/2010/01/
Is it possible to get the posts following vertically on the home page as having checked around other blogs using this theme I see they finish up with posts being overlaid by the sidebar.
http://ghostboxers.com
I really, really love the theme. It is perfect for what I want to do with it so I’d love to be able to make this work.
With respect, Erin
To Both Ellen and Erin – I’m not sure what’s up with these errors – haven’t seen them before but will check into them hopefully within 24 hours and have fixed files available. Thanks so much for pointing it out to me.
Thank You Brandon for your reply.
I will keep checking back to see how to change what I asked about.
Great Theme!
Ellen
Thank you, Brandon. It’s such a lovely theme.
I thought you might like to know I the plugins I have installed are Akismet and Advertising Manager.
Thank you so much for your time.
Regards, Erin